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FALL 2012
AN EFFORT TO HELP PRESERVE IRAQ’S INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL
Jim Miller, Executive Director, Scholar Rescue Fund,
Institute of International Education
elimination — to name a few examples
— in their home countries. However,
as the targeting of intellectuals in Iraq
rose to crisis levels, the Scholar Rescue
Fund needed a new mechanism to
respond quickly. The Institute therefore
launched the Scholar Rescue Fund
Iraq Scholar Rescue Project in 2007
with generous funding from both the
private and public sectors, most notably
the U.S. Department of State, the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation, and the
Richard Lousbery Foundation. The
Scholar Rescue Fund since awarded
fellowships to more than 265 Iraqi
scholars, allowing them to resume their
teaching and research in safety.
The Project’s core work is to arrange
for and fund temporary academic
positions for threatened Iraqi scholars
(in any discipline) at hosting institutions
in secure locations, providing an
academic safe-haven for the fellows to
continue their scholarly work. While
partnering universities, colleges, and
other institutions of higher learning all
over the world — including many of
TAARII’s institutional members — have
generously opened their institutions to
Scholar Rescue Fund Iraqi scholars,
there has been a particular focus on
engaging partners in the Middle East/
North Africa (MENA) region.
More than sixty institutions within
MENA have hosted scholars,
allowing many to assume teaching
and research positions close to
Iraq. The Hashemite Kingdom of
Jordan has been the Project’s leading
host country, providing temporary
sanctuary to 40% of Scholar Rescue
Fund Iraq fellows (the U.S. and U.K.
follow).
Figure 6.1. Scholar Rescue Fund Iraq
Scholar Rescue Fund scholars
Scholar Rescue Project fellow at work in
have
undertaken groundbreaking
a microbiology lab at the University of
research,
presented at academic
Insurbia, Italy. (Photo credit: IIE SRF)
The year is 2006. You are an assistant
professor of political science at the
University of Baghdad. With your
twenty years of experience teaching
in Iraq’s universities and dozens of
publications in peer-reviewed journals,
you are currently pursuing promotion
to a full professorship. Then, just
before the academic year breaks for
the summer, a list containing the names
of 600 Iraqi professors targeted for
assassination is posted on the Internet.
Your name is one of them.
When security concerns in Iraq
reached unprecedented levels, such
stories were not uncommon among
academics, as the campaign to dismantle
Iraq’s intellectual heritage raged. As a
result, the Institute of International
Education’s (IIE) Scholar Rescue
Fund (SRF) program began receiving
hundreds of requests for assistance
from Iraqi professors and researchers
describing daily threats to their lives in
Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, and at many
major universities across the country.
Since its founding in 2002, IIE’s
Scholar Rescue Fund has worked to
support persecuted academics around
the world by awarding fellowships
to scholars suffering censorship,
harassment, imprisonment, and threat of
conferences, filed patents, lectured to
thousands of students, and published
while undertaking the fellowship.
These academics have also contributed
to the growth of their host universities
by training staff and students, and
establishing new departments and
research laboratories. One scholar,
a specialist in electrical engineering
with thirty-five years of post-doctoral
research and teaching experience, fled
Iraq after receiving repeated death
threats and demands for money from
militants. The Scholar Rescue Fund
was able to arrange a visiting professor
position for the scholar at a newly
established college of engineering
within a private university in Jordan.
While there, the scholar assisted faculty
members in establishing a program of
study. He designed courses on electric
circuits and control systems and helped
to establish departmental laboratories,
including identifying and ordering
the necessary equipment. In a country
like Jordan, which has just over thirty
universities, 130 fully funded year-long
placements of qualified faculty members
over five years is not insignificant.
As a consequence of the departure
o f a s i z e a b l e p o r t i o n o f I r a q ’s
professoriate due to large-scale
targeting, the issue of brain drain
understandably arises. Through
monitoring and evaluation of program
participants, we have found that Iraqi
scholars have, indeed, maintained their
academic connections to Iraqi students
and faculty colleagues through a variety
of methods during their fellowships.
To enhance these connections on a
broader scale, the Scholar Rescue
Fund established a distance-learning
component called the “Iraq Scholar
Lecture Series.” The program captures
academic lectures by Scholar Rescue
PAGE 18
TAARII NEWSLETTER
has made a range of Members of the Royal Family in Jordan
a d d i t i o n a l b e n e f i t s have been extremely supportive of these
available to fellowship efforts, offering academic venues and
recipients to help in addressing workshop participants on
t h e i r a d j u s t m e n t t o the importance of Iraq’s rich tradition
the host country and of higher education (fig. 6.3).
to prepare them for
In 2011, these workshops expanded
their scholarly work into a series of training conferences
beyond the fellowship held in Erbil, Iraq. Bringing together
term. Generous donors participants from Iraqi universities and
have made it possible higher education ministries, Scholar
t o e x t e n d a d d i t i o n a l Rescue Fund fellowship recipients,
g r a n t s t o s c h o l a r s and other international education
seeking professional experts, the conferences cover
Figure 6.2. Scholar Rescue Fund Iraq Scholar Rescue
skills training, language issues of broad interest to the higher
Project distance education lecture at al-Anbar University.
training, membership in education community. Topics range
(Photo credit: IIE SRF)
academic associations, from education quality assurance and
a n d a s s i s t a n c e w i t h accreditation of universities to building
Fund Iraqi scholars in the diaspora
for distribution and presentation — publishing costs. Partnerships with institutional linkages to exploring
in DVD format or via live feed — at local training programs in the scholars’ modern teaching methodologies.
Holding academic events in Iraq is
universities throughout Iraq. To date, host countries have enhanced these
over 150 much-needed lectures in fields benefits by tailoring trainings to the reflective of the changing tides of the
Iraq Scholar Rescue Project since its
as diverse as pediatrics, environmental particular needs of Iraqi scholars.
Experience
from
the
first
years
of
inception. While some scholars continue
biotechnology, and trauma psychology
have been made available to faculty the Project has enabled the Scholar to face specific threats in various
and students at more than twenty Rescue Fund to understand the tangible areas of Iraq and seek Scholar Rescue
Iraqi public and private universities. needs of Iraqi scholars before, during, Fund support to find safe academic
University presidents and deans alike and after the fellowship. To help these environments to pursue their work,
have remarked on the impact the efforts, in 2009 SRF began organizing others are able to return to their country
program has had by exposing students tailored training workshops for Iraqi to contribute to a globally engaged
to the country’s best academic minds, scholars. The first workshops took higher education community. As of
no matter their geographic location. place in Amman, Jordan, where scholars this writing, more than 40% of scholars
Pictured in Figure 6.2 is a specialist coming from all over the MENA completing the fellowship have returned
in English literature giving a lecture region convened. The Scholar Rescue to Iraq either to resume their previous
on “Arabian Nights in the West” to Fund partnered with international and academic positions or take up new posts.
students at the Women’s College of local institutions such
Education of al-Anbar University in as the British Council,
western Iraq. Although the scholar is Columbia University,
now based in the U.S., this classroom TA A R I I , a n d t h e
screening reached ninety Iraqi students New York Institute of
Te c h n o l o g y - A m m a n
and faculty colleagues.
As the Iraq Scholar Rescue Project to organize specialized
developed, it became clear that t r a i n i n g s i n c l u d i n g
security concerns are not the only E n g l i s h l a n g u a g e
challenge facing scholars in Iraq. The instruction for academic
impact of the years of Sanctions that purposes, workshops on
restricted access to new technologies, CV writing and research
pedagogies, and learning tools crucial proposal writing, and
to higher education in today’s world training on the use of
Figure 6.3. HRH Prince Raad bin Zeid addressing Iraqi
are still acutely felt. To address these t e c h n o l o g i c a l t o o l s
scholars at an IIE SRF workshop in Amman, Jordan.
(Photo credit: IIE SRF)
challenges, the Scholar Rescue Fund to advance learning.
PAGE 19
FALL 2012
With changing dynamics in the country,
IIE’s Scholar Rescue Fund continues
to operate a multi-phase program to
foster opportunities for preserving and
revitalizing Iraq’s higher education and
scientific sectors.
About the Institute of International
Education
The Institute of International Education
is a world leader in the international
exchange of people and ideas. An
independent, not-for-profit organization
founded in 1919, IIE has a network of
18 offices worldwide and over 1,000
member institutions. IIE designs and
implements programs of study and
training for students, educators, young
professionals and trainees from all
sectors with funding from government
agencies, foundations, and corporations.
IIE also conducts policy research and
program evaluations, and provides
advising and counseling on international
education and opportunities abroad. For
more information, visit the website:
www.iie.org.
About the Scholar Rescue Fund
In 2002, IIE launched the Scholar
Rescue Fund to provide fellowships
for scholars threatened in their home
countries. To date, 715 major academic
fellowships have been awarded to
488 scholars from 48 countries.
These fellowships support temporary
academic positions at safe universities
and colleges anywhere in the world.
Nearly 300 academic institutions in
40 countries have partnered with the
Scholar Rescue Fund by providing safehaven academic homes for the program’s
recipients. Scholars contribute to their
host universities through teaching,
research, lectures and other activities.
In return, host universities provide
professional guidance and financial
and in-kind support. Scholars from
any country may qualify. For more
information, please visit the website:
www.scholarrescuefund.org.
THE ARCHITECTURAL ORNAMENT OF SAMARRA REVISITED:
INITIAL REMARKS AND QUESTIONS
Matt Saba, University of Chicago & 2011 TAARII Fellow
The architectural ornament of Samarra,
a palace-city founded by the caliph alMu‘tasim in A.D. 836, has played an
important role in the historiography of
Islamic art since the initial publications
of the finds from the site.1 For many art
historians, the abstract styles of carving
employed in the city’s palaces and
private houses evidenced the birth of
a new set of aesthetic values that they
associated with Islam’s prohibition of
images (fig. 7.1). Despite its canonical
status, however, there are still gaps
in our understanding of this material.
Since art historical studies have
focused largely on establishing stylistic
classifications, little attention has been
paid to where the fragments housed in
museum collections today originally
appeared in buildings. Moreover,
groups of material that fell outside
the stylistic parameters established
in the early scholarship were ignored
altogether. My dissertation seeks
to shed light on the contexts in
which the architectural ornament of
Samarra originally appeared and was following is a brief overview of some
experienced through a study of the initial observations and questions
material excavated from the city’s main raised by this intriguing assemblage.5
palace, the Dar al-Khilafa. 2
In its aim to incorporate
archaeological and social
contexts into the study of
Samarra’s ornament, my
project contributes to a
growing body of scholarship
that explores the assemblage
with new approaches.3
Last summer with a
U.S. research fellowship
from TAARII, I began my
dissertation research by
surveying the architectural
ornament from Samarra’s
Dar al-Khilafa excavated by
Ernst Herzfeld now housed
in London and Berlin,
while consulting notes on
findspots and archaeological
Figure 7.1. Detail of design from a carved stucco
context in the Herzfeld
panel excavated from Samarra’s Dar al-Khilafa
a r c h i v e s h o u s e d i n Palace. Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst, I. 3507.
Washington, D.C. 4 The
(Photo credit: Matt Saba)